Commissioning of a laser-plasma X-Ray micro-focus source for phase contrast imaging

摘要

Development of laser-plasma X-ray sources provides a new route to high brightness and small source size somewherein the middle of low cost micro-focus X-rays and large scale synchrotron facilities. We explore oneapplication of this new type of sources with emphasis on the stability of the source at high repetition rate andthe advantage over similar conventional sources. In this paper we report the development and application of amicro-focus X-ray source for phase contrast imaging. The X-ray source produced at the Laser Laboratory forAcceleration and Applications (L2A2) of the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC), is made by focusinga 1 mJ, 35 fs, 1kHz pulses at 800 nm wavelength on metallic plates close to the diffraction limit. The X-rayspectra of this source are characterized by the K-α peaks which can be 'tuned' by changing the target materialand a Bremsstrahlung continuum up to several tens of keV. The stability of the source is achieved by optimizingthe positioning system of the metallic target which refresh and keep the surface within the small the Rayleighlength allowing the development of applications.